How To Have Healthy Conflict With Your Partner Over the Holidays
The holiday season can bring much stress for couples and families. Although Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years come with much joy, happiness and restful times, they can also instigate financial stress and busyness that may cause ruptures in your relationship. There are several poor habits and behaviors to avoid over the holidays when trying to foster healthy, quality time with your partner.
American psychologist, John Gottman, names four poor relational habits/behaviors, “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse”. These are a group of behaviors that are seen in most, if not all troubled couples struggling in their relationship. These behaviors are very negative and entail criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and/or stonewalling by one or both partners in a relationship. Criticism includes attacks of a partner’s character and global complaints. Contempt displays disgust and disrespect between spouses through sarcasm and mockery. Defensiveness includes blame of a partner, and stonewalling conveys that a partner is not interested in interacting with the other partner. When expressed in a partnership, these behaviors bring habitual conflict and cause couples to become highly distressed and disconnected.
Like the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, emotional disengagement of partners in a relationship can be extremely detrimental. Partners who are emotionally disengaged will not show signs of negativity, but they display a complete lack of positive affect. Often times, partners become disengaged in an attempt to avoid negativity, but the emotional disengagement can be just as harmful.
When the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse or emotional disengagement occurs, partners in a relationship will often experience “flooding”. This physiological response to unhealthy conflict is described by sweating palms, increased heartrate and irregular breathing. Self-preservation thoughts follow flooding and result it being impossible for partners to take in new information, resulting in conflict resolution becoming nearly impossible.
Negative Reciprocity another poor habit, and it is understood as when one spouse responds to the other spouse’s negativity with more negativity. There are two types of negative reciprocity, but only one of the types is a predictor of a troubled relationship. The more harmful form of negative reciprocity is the pattern of negative escalation, where negativity is responded to with increased negativity. Matching negativity with negativity is normal in relationships, but responding to negativity with increased negativity, such as matching contempt with contempt, is when negative reciprocity becomes most detrimental.
To prioritize healthy and happy interactions with your partner or spouse over the holiday season, focus on solvable problems, accepting your influence, repairing attempts in conflict and “turning toward” your partner. Both happy and unhappy couples have solvable and unsolvable problems. Most conflict can be understood in either of these categories. Solvable problems can be met with a solution while unsolvable problems are perpetual and arise from differences in partners. Happy couples can separate problems into the categories to best manage them, handling the unsolvable problems in a more efficient manner, accepting partner’s viewpoints. When partners are able to accept influence from each other, they can be successful with gridlocked conflict. This entails a couple being willing to yield during an argument, striving to
“win” in the relationship rather than to “win” a fight. It is the ability to find a point of agreement in the partner’s position. Happy couples are also known to utilize “repair attempts” in conflict. This is when partners are able to manage conflict and miscommunication by preventing or decreasing negative escalation in interactions. This may include using apologies, humor, affection, and changing the topic of conversation. The ability to repair a conflict is crucial to avoiding erosion in a relationship. A partner utilizing the skill of “turning toward” the other partner can be an efficient way to improve their relationship. Turning toward consists of one partner responding to another’s attempt to initiate interaction in a positive way. When one partner attempts to initiate interaction, the other has the option to ignore, fostering separation, or respond, fostering connection. When partners can turn towards one another, they have a better opportunity to refine their relationship rather than erode it.
Be mindful of unhealthy habits and behaviors that often occur during conflict with your partner and instead focus on interactions that reinforce healthy conflict resolution and connectedness. These are skills that take time and practice to develop, but the holiday season is the perfect time to put them to the test as stress is inevitable. Connect with your partner, be communicative, extend grace and patience, and set out to have a wonderful, loving holiday experience.
Written by: Savannah Brasher, MS, LMFTA, CFLE-P